FACTBOX: Facts about Colombia's FARC rebels

(Reuters) - Colombia's FARC rebels on Thursday freed a former lawmaker held hostage for more than seven years in their third release of kidnap victims this week.

Here are some facts about the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC from its Spanish initials, Colombia's largest rebel group and Latin America's oldest left-wing insurgency:

* The FARC was established in the 1960s as a communist-inspired peasant army fighting for land reform and to reduce the gulf between rich and poor in the Andean country.

* Branded terrorists by the United States and European Union, the FARC has been driven onto the defensive by President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed military crackdown. Washington has given Colombia $5.5 billion in mostly military aid since 2000.

* U.S. and Colombian authorities say the FARC uses the multibillion-dollar Colombian cocaine trade and extortion to fund its operations. Colombia's four-decade-old conflict is now often a fight over drug-producing land involving the FARC, illegal paramilitaries and other narcotics gangs.

* Violence has eased and the economy has expanded in most of Colombia's cities, but the FARC remains a powerful force in southern jungle regions where the state's presence is weak. Authorities said a FARC extortion racket could be to blame for a January bombing in Bogota that killed two people.

* Better military mobility, improved state intelligence and government rewards for informants have hit the FARC's ability to move and communicate. The guerrilla group has also been weakened by desertions.

* In July last year, military agents posing as aid workers rescued French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate, and three Americans, high-profile FARC hostages who had all been held for years in jungle camps.

* The FARC said its founder Manuel Marulanda had died last March of natural causes after four decades of fighting the state. He was a cohesive figure among the guerrilla force's military and political wings.

* During the same month, Raul Reyes, a FARC spokesman and contact for negotiations over hostages, was killed in his camp hidden in Ecuador in a cross-border strike that sparked a diplomatic crisis in the Andean region.

Another commander, Ivan Rios, was killed later in March by a bodyguard who shot him and chopped off the leader's hand as proof in order to claim a government reward.

* In October, a FARC commander deserted, taking with him a politician held hostage for more than eight years. The government said the escape showed how rebels are falling apart and offered the guerrilla deserter asylum in France.

(Writing by Patrick Markey in Bogota; Editing by Kieran Murray and Eric Walsh)